


Kidnapping and Ransom

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: gathering stormclouds [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Attempted Brainwashing, F/M, Families of Choice, Fix-It, Gen, M/M, Past Relationship(s), slightly silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-01-07
Packaged: 2019-03-01 20:13:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13302336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: "Oh, Force help me. My mother is going to kill me.""Based on Lyra's somewhat excitable account of events," Kaytoo said crisply, "your mother is seventy-six percent more likely to kill her brother."***In which Lyra Andor (aged eleven and a quarter) throws rocks at the Jedi Grand Master, persuades K-2SO to steal a ship, causes Cadet Dameron to go technically AWOL for about half an hour, and kidnaps Prince Ben Organa without even letting him collect a change of pants.





	Kidnapping and Ransom

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this immediately after seeing TLJ, but the germ of the idea has been there since I wrote _Calm Before the Storm_. Posted for brynnmclean.

 

The training temple was not perfectly silent. All buildings settle and murmur in the night, not everyone sleeps on the same schedule, and Ben Organa had rapidly accustomed himself to the noiseless footsteps of the teachers, his fellow students' sneaking, and the soft whistle of the wind through the roofing timbers. It was a world away from Coruscant, or Chandrila, or any of the big Hosnian cities, and sometimes that helped. Sometimes his sleep was undisturbed, and the voices were... quieter.

 

Well, they were certainly better than they had been when he was a boy, usually, and his temper was... improving.  Or had been, until his uncle took to behaving... oddly. Watchfully.

 

It was probably nothing.

 

Ben Organa turned over in his sleep, and then startled, woken by a light, unfamiliar, scuttling tread. He sat up, and frowned into the darkness.

 

His uncle was standing in the doorway, and Ben hadn't heard it open. His uncle was holding a lightsaber, unlit but with a thumb on the catch, and there was a wide raw look in his eyes unlike anything Ben had ever seen, and for a second, just a second, Ben reacted on pure instinct. His own lightsaber flew across his cell to his hand, and lit.

 

His uncle's lightsaber lit too, and the look was _still there_ , and Ben felt fear swamp him, bringing with it the promise of a tide of power -

 

"No!" wailed a very familiar little voice. " _No_! What are you _doing?_ Stop!"

 

Several rocks bounced off the shoulder of Luke Skywalker, Jedi Grand Master, and in the seconds they took to hit the ground Ben recognised the scuttling that had woken him, and the voice of Lyra Andor. He unfroze before his uncle did, and dove out of his cell; Lyra dashed out of the shadows to grab his hand, he scooped her up, and together they ran.

 

Ben ran blindly into the forest, without counting his steps or seeing his way. When he ran out of breath and hit a tree, Lyra wriggled out of his grasp and seized his hand, and dragged him back the way they had come.

 

"I can't - Lyra, I can't go back to my uncle - Lyra, _he'll kill me_ -"

 

“We're not going back to your stupid uncle," Lyra gasped, dodging and jinking neatly around a spiny bramble that painted Ben's shins with scratches. "Just trust me!"

 

"You're a kid!"

 

"Who else have you got to trust?" Lyra shrieked, and shoved Ben bodily up the lowered passenger gangway of a lightweight, nondescript Hosnian yacht, where Ben fell headlong over the outstretched foot of a droid.

 

"Ow," he said, inadequately, as Lyra scrambled ruthlessly over him and shot into the cockpit.

 

"Ben Solo Organa," said the droid, who was in an unfamiliar chassis but talked like Kaytoo. "What are you doing?"

 

"I don't really know," Ben said. He stared up at the ceiling and tried to think properly; as so often, the blur of action, even if it had taken an unorthodox form, had silenced some of the hissing in the back of his head, and although he wasn’t sure where he was or what he was doing, the fear that had threatened to drown him when he faced his uncle had receded. "I think Lyra just rescued me from my uncle."

 

The yacht lurched off the ground, causing Ben to slide inexorably down the cabin until he hit a wall: Kaytoo had grabbed a magnetic hand-hold and was still looking judgementally down at Ben.

 

"Lyra!" Ben wailed. "What are you _doing_?"

 

"Flying the shuttle," Kaytoo said snidely, "obviously," but he was concerned enough to make his way back into the cockpit. Ben, repeatedly thrown off his feet by the rapid and uneven progress of the yacht, and distinctly less capable of using magnetic holds to get a grip, struggled to join him and Lyra. In fact, he reached the cockpit only as Lyra and Kaytoo had their heads together over a hyperspace course.

 

The sight of the planet's surface far below gave him a faint but distinct vertigo.

 

"Everyone's going to think I kidnapped you," Ben said weakly, sitting down before he could fall down.

 

"I rescued you," Lyra said chirpily. "Very different."

 

"Be that as it may, Lyra," Kaytoo said, "this hyperspace course is defective. Send Cassian and Jyn a message while I plot a better one."

 

Ben pinched the bridge of a nose he was fairly sure he'd never grow into. "Lyra, we can't - we can't do this. Set me down somewhere and I'll just - I'll manage."

 

The voices were rising. He pressed hard on his temples, trying to shut them up. Lyra's little hand patted him on the shoulder as she left, carrying a small datapad with her.

 

"That would be illogical," Kaytoo said precisely. "You are Prince Ben Organa, apprentice to Luke Skywalker -"

 

"Not any more," Ben said bitterly.

 

"Irrelevant. The entire galaxy thinks you are. You have an enormous target painted on your back, and Cassian would be annoyed if you were abducted." Kaytoo stared pointedly at Ben. "It would create a lot of extra work."

 

"Well," Ben said, at something of a loss. "Probably." He sighed. "But there's nothing else we can do. I can't put Lyra in danger -" if she was in danger; there were several factions disputing that point inside Ben's own head, which was unnerving - "and you can't expect this boat to outrun Luke Skywalker -"

 

"No," Kaytoo said. "I expect our departure to slow him down long enough for the virus in his central processor unit to be detected, at which point Cassian and Jyn will act."

 

"He's Luke Skywalker, though," Ben said desperately. "Killed the Empire. Blew up the Death Star. The Last and the First of the Jedi -"

 

 _You could fight him, though_ , wheedled the voice he heard most often. _With the darkness, you could master him. If the girl hadn't interfered you would have seen -_

 

Ben replied with some of his father's crudest Corellian bad language, and focussed very hard on the place where Adi had split one of his knuckles by accident in training.

 

"Cassian and Jyn will act," Kaytoo repeated. In that faith Ben heard some of the trust that he had placed in his mother's best fixers when he'd finally managed to tell them about the voice, and was a little reassured.

 

Lyra reappeared, and strapped herself into the co-pilot's seat. Dazedly, Ben noticed that she was still wearing her pyjamas, and a pair of fur-lined boots. He himself was barefoot, which was... a problem, since there was no way there'd be a pair of shoes he could borrow. Cassian was at least six inches shorter than him - well, he had been before Ben had had his latest growth spurt - and had correspondingly smaller feet.

 

"Would you like to do the honours?" Kaytoo enquired, with obvious, if sardonic, affection.

 

Lyra gave one of her delighted little laughs, and shoved a lever forward, sending them flying into hyperspace. She looked back over her shoulder and beamed at Ben.

 

"You are a menace, Smiley," Ben croaked, but he couldn't help smiling back. "Where are we going?"

 

"The Naval Academy," Lyra said, as if this were obvious and reasonable. "To collect Poe."

 

Ben stared at her, then rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands. "Uh - Lyra."

 

"The Academy is due to shut for the Life Day holiday period in twelve standard hours," Kaytoo said. "We will arrive in eleven standard hours, which will give us plenty of time to locate Poe Dameron and get him on board."

 

"But," Ben said feebly.

 

"What?" Kaytoo said crushingly.

 

Ben, defeated, said a word in Alderaanian he couldn't really remember the meaning of, but with which he had once brought a Defence Council session to a crashing halt, after tripping over his own feet and falling headfirst into the row of benches below. Luckily the session had been closed, no cameras, but there were still a lot of people who wouldn't let him forget it, and his mother had refused to translate the word - probably out of guilt for having taught it to him in the first place.

 

Ben felt that the occasion of becoming an involuntary accomplice to his ex-boyfriend's kidnap was worthy of the word in question. Whatever it was.

 

"That's very rude," Lyra said. She sounded impressed.

 

"Don't tell your father I said it," Ben said, rather muffled by his hands, which were now folded over his face. "Oh, Force help me. My mother is going to kill me."

 

"Based on Lyra's somewhat excitable account of events," Kaytoo said crisply, "your mother is seventy-six percent more likely to kill her brother. Not that either contingency is especially likely, but -"

 

"Never tell me the odds," Ben said, still swimming in visions he knew weren't real, of his mother condemning him, of that lightsaber raised in his doorway, and that voice hissing in the back of his head the whole time, like it knew anything - "Please, Kaytoo. Never tell me the odds."

 

He managed to reassert his age and authority over Lyra long enough to discover why she had been up in the first place (she had wanted a midnight snack), make her a snack (to Kaytoo's specifications, not her own very sugary ones), send her to bed (much against her will) and write a brief message to his mother on Coruscant. It took him an hour to type out and edit the few lines he managed to come up with; the dominant voice kept hissing interpretations at him, ways of understanding what had just happened, and if there was one thing Ben had managed to learn in the six years since he'd disclosed his little problem, it was not to trust a word that came into his head without his conscious thought.

 

_~~Mother, my uncle attacked me~~ _ ~~~~

_~~Uncle Luke is a traitor and a would-be murderer~~ _ ~~~~

_~~My nightmares were visions, my uncle wants to kill me~~ _ ~~~~

_Mamá - I think Uncle Luke is sick. He came to my room in the middle of the night with a lightsaber and he looked so strange I almost didn't recognise him. If Lyra hadn't distracted him we would have fought. I don't understand what's happening. Help._

 

He re-read the message several times, looking for anything that read as if the voice had written it, and then sent it.

 

He looked at Kaytoo. "Will you be all right here?"

 

"Of course," Kaytoo said, with strong overtones of 'you idiot'. "Go and recharge."

 

 

Ben woke screaming from a nightmare an hour later, Lyra slapping him urgently in an attempt to wake him up and Kaytoo looming over them both. It took several minutes for him to remember where he was and what he was doing, but he knew Lyra, even terrified and disoriented; the good thing about that was that if he had to comfort her, he was less scared for himself. The voice was perfectly silent when Lyra was crying and he needed to dry her tears.

 

He used the fresher and dressed himself in a dark-coloured dressing gown he found in there: it was probably enormous on Cassian, and just about fit him. His sweat-soaked sheets, shirt and shorts went into the laundry; thankfully he had been very tired after the previous day's training and had fallen into bed wearing everything but his socks, so he still had underwear, and could wash that when the shorts were wearable again.

 

"What's your favourite holo, Smiley?" he asked when he came out, scooping Lyra up and tugging on one of her braids. "And have you got it loaded?"

 

"Princess Winter," Kaytoo said, naming an adventure story vaguely based on the adventures of a Queen of Naboo and her handmaidens, decades before Ben had been born. It was very vaguely based, though, due to Imperial political restrictions; Ben had been surprised to hear Chancellor Mothma herself shred it. Apparently Queen Amidala had been far more interesting than Princess Winter. "It is already set up."

 

" _Gracias_ Kay," Lyra said, into Ben's neck, which she was clutching. Her natural state was very cheerful, sometimes annoyingly so; she was charming, gregarious and as smiley as her nickname suggested, a stark contrast to her tough, dour parents - but Ben had seen Jyn Erso and Cassian Andor smile at each other, and had no doubts as to where Lyra got her bright eyes. Similarly, he had no doubts as to where she'd learned to be this tense and still in fear.

 

" _De nada_ ," Kaytoo said, in the worst accent Ben had ever heard, including his own.

 

 

They watched four twenty-minute episodes of Princess Winter before Lyra fell asleep. Ben carried her back to bed and tucked her in; she didn't stir.

 

He turned back to Kaytoo, who was watching him with dispassionate optical sensors. "If I slept in the co-pilot's seat," he said, "you could restrain me, if I did anything... stupid."

 

"I could," Kaytoo said flatly. "Do you think that is necessary?"

 

"I think it would make me feel better," Ben said.

 

 

Lyra - dressed in an overly elaborate outfit of her own choosing, but with a healthy breakfast inside her and clean teeth - went to fetch Poe from the Naval Academy. None of them had a private communicator line for him (at least, not on the yacht), Ben would be instantly recognised if he left the yacht, and Kaytoo as a droid was unlikely to be allowed in to the Academy without clearer ident papers than he possessed.

 

Lyra, on the other hand, could get into most places, sometimes by climbing and sneaking and slicing, and sometimes by smiling sweetly at people and looking harmless. Ben spent the entire hour she was gone shouting back at the voice which insisted he should overpower the droid and leave, chewing his fingernails, and rehearsing grovelling apologies for allowing Lyra to go anywhere on her own, but she was back at exactly the appointed hour, towing Poe behind her and looking very important.

 

"I'm being kidnapped," Poe said, plainly having the most fun of his entire life, and Ben _missed_ him, suddenly and sharply, missed the way Poe could make anything feel like a party, missed that reckless joy and all that laughing in the face of danger.

 

"Join the club," he said, more gruffly than he meant to, and appalled himself by sounding exactly like his father.

 

Poe's smile softened. "You all right, Ben?"

 

Ben squashed the voice - which never had anything good to say about his father - into the tiniest corner of his mind possible, and managed an honest answer. "It's complicated."

 

Poe nodded. "So. Where next, _nena_?"

 

Lyra looked at Ben like she trusted him, which Ben didn't think he deserved.

 

"Cloud City," Ben said. He scraped a hand through his hair. "Uncle Lando always said if I wanted to do something dramatic and irresponsible, I should talk to him."

 

Lyra blew an enormous raspberry, and Poe grinned at Ben over her head.

 

 

"Ben," Poe said, when they had hit hyperspace for the first of several jumps, "why are you wearing... pyjamas? Are those pyjamas? And where are your shoes?"

 

"That's also complicated," Ben said.

 

"Okay," Poe said, as peaceably as if it was really that simple.

 

Maybe in Poe's mind it was.

 

 

Not only were they escorted to Baron Calrissian's personal landing pad by a very polite escort of fighters, but Uncle Lando himself came on board with a stylish outfit in a garment bag and a pair of shoes.

 

"Your mother commed me when you disappeared," he explained. "Said Lyra Andor had kidnapped you without even a change of pants."

 

"It was an emergency," Lyra protested.

 

"Lyra's assessment is correct," Kaytoo pronounced.

 

"I didn't say it wasn't," Lando said amicably. "But a man - or woman, or anyone else - needs a change of pants."

 

Ben escaped to one of the smaller cabins to change. "Does my mother know I'm here?"

 

"Not yet," Lando said. "And neither does your dad, but I can change that, if you like. He stopped here on the way back from his latest race, but he hasn't yet been told you're here, and honestly, he's still sleeping off our little evening of reminiscences last night."

 

Ben, now decently dressed, came back into the common area to put the boots on. Lando had given him a swirling green cloak, and Ben could see from Poe's face that it suited him; he gloomily looked forward to the moment when he tripped over its leading edge.

 

"Um," he said, playing inelegantly for time.

 

"I thought you would at least want breakfast before you see him," Lando said blandly, "so I haven't had him woken up."

 

With a bucket of water and a klaxon, Ben had no doubt. No-one outside his immediate family was ever as ruthless with Dad as Uncle Lando.

 

"Thanks," Ben said slowly, addressing himself to his laces, and pretending not to notice the way that Poe was standing casually beside him and Lyra was bristling in his defence. Kaytoo had disappeared into the cockpit again, but two out of three wasn't bad.

 

It was... heartwarming, and Ben didn't deserve it, but he was going to hang onto it anyway.

 

"For what it's worth," Lando added, examining his own nails minutely, "the last I heard from your mother, she and your Uncle Luke had an enormous row. Last I heard from _this_ young lady's mother -" he pointed at Lyra, who stuck her tongue out - "your mother and uncle shouted so much at each other birds fell from the sky and they both got nosebleeds, and now everyone at the Temple is sitting through a compulsory symposium on the meaning of fear and the many, many ways there are to evoke it in this terrible galaxy of ours."

 

"Oh," Ben said blankly, and looked at Poe, who was grinning, and then Uncle Lando, who smiled.

 

Lyra took a firm grip on his hand. "I think we should have breakfast," she announced. "And then I think we should go and say hello to Captain Solo."

 

"That's the first sensible thing you’ve said for days," Ben informed her.

 

Lyra kicked him, but Uncle Lando and Poe's laughter was worth it.


End file.
